The people at NBC are beaming. The folks at Fox are steaming. The Cowboys’
visit to Washington next Sunday will be in prime time on NBC.

Kickoff was moved from noon to 7:20 p.m.

The behind-the-scenes network lobbying for the game that will decide the NFC
East champion may have been more entertaining than any game played in front of
the cameras Sunday.

For the second consecutive season, the NFL has handed the NFC East title game
to Sunday Night Football, leaving the Foxies wondering what the
network of the NFC has to do to get the conference’s ultimate regular-season
game in its prime late Sunday afternoon time slot.

Recall that last season, the NFL handed NBC the Cowboys-Giants in Week
17.

As consolation for losing the Cowboys-Redskins game it craved, Fox got Green
Bay-Minnesota at 3:25 p.m. There will be a wild-card spot at stake for the
Vikings, and Adrian Peterson has a long shot at Eric Dickerson’s season rushing
record. But that’s hamburger compared with the prime cut the NFL served up to
its favorite prime-time partner.

Cowboys-Redskins was the natural choice, given the NFL’s public stance on
what it wants its final regular-season kickoff to be. The Cowboys win, and they
are in. Lose, and it’s go home. Ironically, had the Cowboys beaten the Saints
and had a shot at a wild-card spot, the game might have gone to Fox.

There had been speculation that owner Jerry Jones knew something when he said
on his radio show last week he was doubtful the game would be moved to prime
time. But a Cowboys source assured later that Jones was simply speculating.

Studio catch: Late in the first half, the Cowboys went
three-and-out, taking only 15 seconds off the clock. That put the ball back in
Saints quarterback Drew Brees’ hands. In the ensuing 47 seconds, he marched his
team down for a field goal that put them up 17-14 at the end of the half. Back
in the Fox studio, Jimmy Johnson and Michael Strahan questioned Jason Garrett’s
play-calling, insisting he should have run the ball to eat clock and keep Brees
off the field.

Goose on the loose: Sideline analyst Tony Siragusa offered
a catchy nickname for the Cowboys defense, which featured seven players added
lately to replace injured defenders from the early season roster. “The New Name
Defense,” Siragusa called it. Of course, after its effort against the Saints,
the unit may prefer “Witness Protected.”

Johnson in the pregame studio on the NFC East race: “The
Giants are the most talented team on the field, but there’s no hunger there. It
happens to teams that have had success, especially defending champions. They get
complacent. The hungriest team in the NFC East is the Washington Redskins, and
that’s why I pick them to win the division next week at home.”

Pick of the week: In the pregame studio, Johnson, Howie
Long and Terry Bradshaw went with the Cowboys. Strahan picked the Saints.

Tweet of the week comes from someone who noticed that the Cowboys
didn’t sack the Saints quarterback and barely rattled him throughout: “At
least you can’t accuse the Cowboys of putting a bounty on Drew Brees.”

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About Barry Horn

Barry Horn has covered sports media for the last two decades. He was born in The Bronx, went to college at NYU, graduate school at Northwestern and worked at the Miami Herald immediately before joining SportsDay in 1981.

He once worked at the now defunct Hollywood Sun-Tattler, which despite its name was not a supermarket tabloid. His work as a feature writer, his other hat here, has earned him national, state and local awards, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination and an unequalled five state-wide Fred Hartman Awards for "excellence in sportswriting."

His wife runs a dental practice in Plano. His two sons attended the University of Texas and Texas A&M, and his daughter attends Trinity University in San Antonio.